This is something Big Heart Network gets really passionate about. Charities delivering their message directly to their supporters and prospective donors – the lifeblood of their organisations.

And it is not just about pulling on the old heartstrings (although it doesn’t hurt, right?).

Email marketing requires planning and precision to be effective and efficient. And here’s how we do it, the Big Heart way.

Heart-stopping subject lines

Email offers a very high return on investment in terms of money and time. But only if recipients actually look at what you are sending. Using the right words in a subject line improves the open rate of emails exponentially. Charities rely on the generosity of the others but continual run of emails containing the word ‘donate’ in the subject line will pall very quickly, whereas appealing for people to ‘help’ is much more like to get your supporters clicking to find out how.

Try this interesting email subject line keyword checker from Adestra to test whether your words are working for you or against you

Care about your audience

Use carefully harvested data to make give supporters a personalised experience. Letting them know you value and understand them not just by the words used in the email but the types of email they receive. You wouldn’t send out a blanket welcome email to all your donors when a new one signs up so don’t take this generalised approach at any other time either.

By segmenting the data, automated emails can be sent specifically to supporters who took part in previous events prompting them to sign up for the next challenge, or thanking them for a recent donation and let them know what the money was used for improves accountability.

Emails that are engaging and relevant will motivate the reader to take a desired action.

Seduce your supporters

Whether your charity is looking for leads, conversions and supporter retention, the basic structure of the email will be the same. Your readers want to enjoy the interaction so make it easy for them.

Be concise and very, very clear what you want them to do or take away from the message. Focus on this call to action.

Hopefully they will want to find out more – how could they resist your entertaining yet informative copy? Use links to drive traffic to your website where you can expand on a subject in which they have already shown an interest – making sure the links are fully tested.

In that same vein, keep the design simple to prevent rendering problems and optimise your output for mobile viewers.

A consistent, appropriate look using your organisation’s logo, colours, fonts, tone and branding for all communications will enhance trust and looks professional.

And last but not least, proofread – it sounds obvious but we all make mistakes. And it would be better if thousands of people didn’t have to see them!

If you have set your heart on an arresting email campaign but aren’t sure if it will deliver or maybe even know where to begin, contact the Big Heart Network at grace@yellowjigsaw.co.uk or check out our Lunch&Learn seminars that are coming up here. We’d love to help.